Kingston is the world's largest manufacturer of computer memory, with manufacturing plants around the world. If it's memory, Kingston has it in their catalog. That even includes high-end, enthusiast memory that Kingston markets under the HyperX name.

The clear blue heatspreaders with the HyperX logo identify this as enthusiast memory, and Kingston rates their 2GB kit at DDR400. We would expect, based on this speed rating, that the memory is Infineon B die, but we are not certain which chips Kingston uses for this Hyper X part.

Specifications

Kingston rates their 2GB kit conservatively at 2.5-3-3 at DDR400, at standard voltage.

Kingston KHX3200AK2/2G Memory Specifications

Number of DIMMs & Banks

2 DS

DIMM SizeTotal Memory

1GB2GB

Rated Timings

2.5-3-3-7 at DDR400

Rated Voltage

Standard (2.6V) Voltage

SPD

3-3-3-8

When we first saw these published specifications, we suspected that Kingston might be using a new memory chip for this 2GB kit. However, you will see in the test results that the actual performance is a mirror of how we have come to expect Infineon B die to perform.

Test Results

Kingston KHX3200AK2/2G (DDR400) - 2x1GB Double-Bank

CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz

MemorySpeed

Memory Timings& Voltage

Quake3fps

Sandra UNBuffered

Sandra StandardBuffered

Super PI 2M places(time in sec)

Wolfenstein - Radar - Enemy Territory fps

12x200

400DDR

2-3-2-72.6V

539.2

INT 2511FLT 2648

INT 6040FLT 6008

82

117.6

11x218

436DDR

2.5-3-2-72.6V

541.9

INT 2648FLT 2811

INT 6435FLT 6382

82

118.0

10x240

480DDR

3-3-3-72.8V

550.1

INT 2830FLT 2908

INT 6675FLT 6602

81

119.1

11x240(2.64GHz)

Highest Mem SpeedDDR 480

3-3-3-72.8V

561.7

INT 2846FLT 3001

INT 7079FLT 6984

77

125.3

To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration.

While rated at 2.5-3-3, our Kingston 2GB HyperX performed at DDR400 at 2-3-2 timings - much better than rated. Performance was good all the way to DDR480, but we could not achieve stable performance at any setting above DDR480. This was the poorest overclock among the nine 2GB kits tested in this roundup.

In the range from DDR400 to DDR480, the Kingston HyperX 2GB kit is competitive with any of the other memories. If that range is all that is required, the HyperX will do an excellent job. If you want greater overclocking abilities, however, you need to look at one of the other eight memories tested in this roundup. Kingston HyperX is often an excellent value in the memory market. It is also worthwhile to compare pricing of the Kingston 2GB kit to competitors' pricing.

Apart from these parts not having been available, the new batch that carries only the name given by reviews are flagged by poor performance, different IC's from the original batch, and lots of glitches.
I am sure Corsair and all the other manufacturers are doing the same, paper launch, hard launch cherry picked and then selling out to unsuspecting customers a COMPLETELY different product, backed by reputable reviews.
Don't you feel like they have been using you and used your reputation and popularity in order to commit something very close to fraud ???
If you encourage us to buy these products then you have the responsability to follow up on the products life and batches so that once they try to do this again you will be there to sanction this and PROTECT US. Otherwise your reviews become fairy tales and the only ones that have the reviewed products are you and a couple of people in the world.
GO FOR THEM ! END THIS UNFAIR PRACTICE ! Reply

Crucial have infact stopped making there 1gig DDRI sticks due to the massive fail rate on there high end products.

i have had 6x 512mb failures and 4x 1gig failures. While there customer services is the best of ANY online company ive dealt with, there high end products are really bad quality now.... the ram overheats, then after a few months wont run at 1t, then it starts making noises while you access it, before finaly degrading over a month from 2-2-2-6 settings down to 3-4-4-10 untill failing totaly.

This includes chips (my latest two) which ive been using at 2.7volts ONLY, and with active cooling, yet they are still hotter than my X2 4400 at 4800 speeds...Last week they run fine at 2-2-2-7 1t, now they are at 3-3-3-8 2t :(

... Why there high end products have problems i dont know, there normal or value ram runs fine for YEARS and YEARS.

Very disapointed with it all apart from the customer services. However even that has started to disapoint me, as they refused to RMA/refund me for my 2x 512mb pair... Reply

on an other note it is an consern to me as well i have never used ram that can heat my room (needs active cooling) like others have posted it does run hot if not cooled i cant seem to get to 2-2-2-7 T1 my asus a8n-sli prem does an anoying thing by auto setting it to 4 5 5 12 {fail safe maybe?}(when i open A64 tweeker as it shows the info) then the nvidia Sound or nvidia video tray Icon crashs the system with an nice BSOD, (works fine tho at 3-3-3-7 T1 @ ddr500 2.7v or ddr speed lower but just run it at ddr400 ish now)

an but realy any way good OCZ or just standered TwinMoss ram is realy real world 2-4% performance dif (Amd64 On chip ram contorler removes the bottle neck that was on the Older k7 chips i go for lower timeings over more bandwith)

My first pair failed memtest at 250mhz, seemed stable at 247mhz. My second pair does 250mhz but not much more. Fails at 255mhz. All this is on a DFI Expert board with an opteron 165 3-4-4-8 1T timings at 2,6-2,8v. Voltage doesn't seem to matter att all to these sticks, they fail at the same speeds regardless for me. Reply

I went for the Twinx2048-3200c2pt because of the lower timings and $197 AMIR price. I haven't researched this much lately, but I recall PC3200 with tight timings getting the nod from the enthusiast community for the Athlon 64.
The TWINX2048-4000PT that I faced it off to lists timings of 3-4-4-8 which I thought wasn't preferable to the tighter timings especially with a price of $233.
The OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K is going for the same price of about $200 but the OCZ5001024EBPE only appears on newegg as a single 1GB module for $153.44 + $4.81 shipping.
That's too rich for my blood.
I guess the question for me would be which is the best for $200 +- $20? Reply

Besides the TWINX kit, corsair offers single 1GB modules too - again marked as 4000PT
The price for the kits for some reason seems higher than two separate modules.
So my question is, are the separate modules the same thing as what's in the kits? Why don't you mention them at all, and either recommend them for better value over the overpriced kits, or, if they dont perform as well, warn users about them? Reply

I would have liked to have seen four 512MB modules shown in the graphs as a refrence of how much or how little there is to gain by using these pairs of 1GB modules. By doing this I could form a cost/benefit analasys. Reply

I'm going to wait to see if the price on DDR1 falls again before AMD goes DDR2. If it does, I'll get 2 x 1GiB to replace the 4 x 512MiB I bought over a year ago, but haven't been able to use until just now. Reply